My impression of the alternative view is that relationships should be viewed as unconditional expressions of solidarity. Rather like a TV show where no matter the situation, friendship always hangs together. But this seems strange and arbitrary. Why should I show unconditional solidarity with A as opposed to B? I certainly can't do it with both, because A and B hate each other! And even in the most idealistic TV show, transactional analysis is never far away - I'll be there for you, 'cos you're there for me too. In the real world, maintaining relationships is costly, and we need to protect ourselves from freeloaders and PD-defection.
My mental model says that the anti-transactional side is a mixture of:
But all of this posits no rational opposition to my own viewpoint, which is very convenient for me, and not very charitable! So that's why I am asking, to educate myself, and to get a better idea of what other people mean when they say that you shouldn't view relationships as transactional.
People who think "transactional" only applies to short-term transactions, and would happily view my model as appropriate.
Close, but not fully there. The point of a transaction is that the debt is to be paid fairly quickly and it is desired that a state is reached quickly where debts are cleared and thus both are "free", free of obligations, and the parties do not owe each other anything, and thus can decide without obligations whether they want to go on or not. This makes it fairly obviously short-term transactions.
Relationalism is w...
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